


Memento

by lizard_socks



Series: Star Trek / Steven Universe [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-01 03:57:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18792505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizard_socks/pseuds/lizard_socks
Summary: 2269: Spock keeps a couple of Earth gemstones in his quarters as a reminder of his sister - but when a Romulan boarding party tries to take them, they come to life.(Spoilers for Discovery season 2)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you haven't seen Steven Universe - a gem is usually referred to by the name of its gem; if ambiguity arises, you'd either use their alphanumeric designation or (if you're Steven) a whimsical nickname. The character people call Skinny is a Jasper - since this story has no other Jaspers in it, she is referred to as simply "Jasper" throughout.

Commander Spock opened a drawer in his quarters on the _Enterprise._ The room was still sparse, and he didn't yet have most of his personal items taken out of storage. After the events of the past few months, he found that he would rather focus on his duty on the ship.

There were certain things he knew he wanted to keep, though. Spock reached into a drawer and took out a container with two small stones - jasper and carnelian.

"You never seemed like the sentimental type," Michael said.

"I have a surplus of space in my quarters," said Spock. "To dispose of these items would be illogical."

Michael Burnham, a human, was the foster daughter of the Vulcan ambassador Sarek. Sarek, of course, was Spock's father. The two had grown up together, and though it seemed unlikely the two would ever see each other again, Spock found himself imagining her presence, thinking to himself about what Michael might say.

Spock opened the container and set it on an otherwise empty desk.

"The other artifacts in this room are Vulcan," Michael noted. "But those stones were found on Earth."

"Yes," Spock replied. "Although my Vulcan heritage distinguishes me from those with whom I serve, I must also acknowledge that I am half human."

Even to a product of his own imagination, Spock preferred not to reveal the whole truth. The stones had been given to Michael by a friend, and they had somehow found their way into Spock's belongings when he left for the _Enterprise._ He had intended to return them.

That now seemed unlikely.

* * *

Spock was still serving on the _Enterprise_ twelve years later, under a different captain and with a different crew.

Through all that time, the activity taking place in Spock's quarters had been unchanged and rather unremarkable. Spock did not generally invite other crew members into his quarters, and his routine remained generally unchanged. Practically nobody entered or left the room but him.

That is, until 2270.

The _Enterprise_ was engaged in battle with a small handful of cloaked Romulan ships. Montgomery Scott, the ship's chief engineer, burst onto the bridge.

"The shields are back at a hundred percent, but we've got bigger problems!" he said. "The Romulans have gotten onto the ship!"

Captain Kirk turned to his first officer.

"Spock, can you locate them?"

"It will take time to reroute power back to the ship's internal sensors," Spock said. "In the meantime, we should be able to trace their transporter signatures and narrow our search to a specific region of the ship."

Lt. M'Ress was seated next to Spock at the communications station. A member of a feline species, she was one of the few non-humans besides Spock. She quickly programmed a query into the ship's computer.

"I'm only seeing six transporter traces," she told them. "The deck they beamed onto is dedicated to quarters for the crew."

"It takes a lot of work to beam someone into a narrow region like that," Scott said. "I'd have a hard time believing that was an accident."

"We need to seal off all non-essential pathways," said Kirk. "They might still find a way through, but let's slow them down. M'Ress, make sure we have security teams in place."

Meanwhile, the Romulan centurion Solok and his crew were searching Spock's quarters.

"Are you sure it's here?" asked Sublieutenant Toran.

"Yes, I'm sure." Solok was younger than Toran, and did not want to tolerate such insubordination, but the task at hand was too pressing. They needed to find the stones before Starfleet's security officers found them.

"There they are!"

One of the other Romulan officers - a new one, Solok didn't know her name - ran over to the desk and reached out to grab the stones, only to jump back, startled, when the stones began to levitate and glow.

Solok pulled a handheld disruptor and aimed it at the humanoid shapes that were forming. He narrowed his gaze as the light took shape. And he fired.

All it did was make a dent in the wall.

"Well, _this_ doesn't seem right," said Jasper. She was tall and lanky, orange with light, almost white hair.

Carnelian yawned and stretched her arms above her head. She was much shorter, with red skin and hair down to her feet. Both wore outfits with geometric designs in three shades of blue.

"This doesn't look like a kindergarten," she said. "It's too small."

She looked around.

"Maybe it's a spaceship."

Jasper walked up to Solok.

"Hi, I'm Jasper."

Solok hesitantly reached out to shake her hand, while his other hand reached for a blade hidden in his uniform. At once, he took the blade and swung it towards her.

She grabbed his arm in midair and threw him clear across the room.

"Whoa! Are they bad guys?" asked Carnelian.

"I hope so, or we're gonna be in a lot of trouble!"

Jasper dodged a punch from Toran. Carnelian ran over and knocked Toran and another Romulan officer to the floor. Jasper threw her a quick look, and she shrugged.

"Well, we might as well commit."

She jumped onto Jasper's shoulder. Jasper grabbed Carnelian in her hand and, with a baseball pitcher's windup, threw her across the room with a wicked curve. Carnelian rolled around the room at incredible speed and took out the other Romulans before smacking into the door.

As she stood back up, the door opened, and they were greeted by M'Ress and three security officers armed with phasers.

"They're dressed different," said Carnelian.

Japser walked over to the doorway.

"I really hope you're not on the same side as all those guys we just beat up," she said.


	2. Chapter 2

Spock followed the ship's doctor, Leonard McCoy, into a room with a makeshift holding cell.

"The Romulans are in custody on the other side of the ship," he explained. "We wanted to keep them as far apart as we could."

"How is their condition?" asked Spock.

"The Romulans? A few injuries, but they'll be all right. As for these two" - McCoy gestured towards Jasper and Carnelian, sitting on the other side of a one-way mirror - "your guess is as good as mine."

"Do they have an unusual biology?"

"As near as I can tell, they don't have any biology," said McCoy. "They might as well be rocks."

On the other side of the mirror, Jasper sat on the floor, constantly moving around and trying to make herself comfortable. Carnelian had given up and was laying on her side, facing the wall.

"They must think we're dangerous," Jasper said.

"Well, we are, right?" Carnelian said. "We're so much stronger than everyone else."

"Who are we, though?"

Carnelian rolled onto her back. "I'm Carnelian, and you're Jasper."

"I know _that,_ " said Jasper. "But who are _we_? Like the two of us together? Are we supposed to be a pair? Were we made together? Or did we just end up here by accident?"

"This is a weird place to wake up for the first time," Carnelian said. "With no other Gems around."

"We're supposed to be soliders, aren't we?" asked Jasper. "Why would Homeworld send an army of two people? And what are we even supposed to _do?_ "

"Maybe it _was_ by accident." Carnelian shrugged. "Maybe we aren't supposed to be here at all."

Spock, now alone, listened to the Gems talk through an earpiece on the wall.

Michael appeared behind Spock, looking just as she did twelve years prior. She was looking though the mirror.

"Are they the same age?" she asked

"Yes," Spock said.

"So they're twins."

"You said these gemstones were given to you by Ensign Tilly, correct?"

"Yes," said Michael. "Unfortunately, since I'm not the _real_ Michael Burnham, I don't know any more than you do."

"In any case," said Spock, "it seems appropriate that my memento of you should reveal itself to be a pair of beings with such a relationship."

"They get along better than we did at that age," Michael said.

"Depending on your method of measurement," Spock said, "their age is either thousands of years, or two hours."

Michael turned to Spock.

"This is the first time I've appeared to you like this outside of your quarters, isn't it?"

"It is also the first time the gems have been removed from my quarters since I brought them here," Spock said. "Perhaps my visions of you have been caused by their proximity."

* * *

Spock walked onto the bridge.

"Can you tell us anything about them, Spock?" asked the captain.

"I know only what they have said about themselves," said Spock, "but I believe it to be accurate, if incomplete. Apparently, this is the first time they have gained conciousness. However, they already know their own names and some of their own abilities."

"Do you have any idea where they're from?"

"They imply an allegiance to a place they call 'homeworld'. However, I cannot rule out a terrestrial origin."

"You're saying they could come from Earth?"

"I had been operating under that assumption when their gemstones were in my posession. It may yet be true."


	3. Chapter 3

Solok stood on the transporter pad with his crew. Romulans didn't get injured easily; although he was still sore, it was the hit to his ego that was more painful. The _Enterprise_ didn't even care enough to detain them; apparently they were content to send Solok and his crew back to a Romulan warbird with no further questions.

Scott stood at the control panel. "We'll have to lower the shields to beam them out, captain," he said.

Kirk responded over the intercom. "Then let's make it quick."

The Romulan crew seemed to disappear as Scott adjusted the controls to send them back to their ship. Everything was going smoothly at first. But once they were gone, the ship's computers suddenly went offline.

* * *

"Do we have shields, Spock?" Kirk asked.

"There is no way to tell at the moment, Captain."

Kirk got up and walked over to Spock's station. "Spock, M'Ress, see if you can get that computer back online. If the shields aren't up, there's not much we can do without it."

Spock slid over to the communications station, where M'Ress was performing a manual reset. Once she finished entering the bootstrap code into the console, every station on the bridge started to come back on.

The ship's helmsman, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, turned around from his seat in front of Kirk's. "All functions back online, Captain," he said. "Shields were up the whole time. Whatever that was, it shut off the computer, but it didn't damage anything."

Kirk slowly sat back down in his chair. "They must have known that... whatever that was wouldn't have been enough to take out the shields. Why spend all that energy just to knock our computer offline for thirty seconds?"

"Perhaps it was not a Romulan attack," Spock said. "It could have been a naturally occuring phenomenon in this region of space."

"Then maybe the Romulans think it was an attack from us," said M'Ress.

Kirk made brief eye contact with M'Ress. They seemed to agree on the next course of action.

"Hail them," said Kirk.

"...On screen."

Solok appeared on the _Enterprise_ 's viewscreen. "I suppose you're going to ask about the electrical pulse."

"Did it come from your ship?" Kirk asked.

"It did."

Kirk kept a straight face. "I'm surprised you'd admit it."

"It's hardly sensitive information," Solok said. "It's no secret that we'd rather not have those weapons fall into your hands."

"Weapons?" asked Kirk.

"I admit, our intelligence reports on them turned out to be rather... incomplete. But you saw firsthand how powerful they are. We can't let the Federation get access to that kind of raw destructive energy."

* * *

Carnelian was on the floor, her body struggling to keep form, when Spock walked in.

"You got those stones from me," Michael said, her apparition once again appearing alongside him. "I got them from Tilly. Seeing an alien lying there, afraid? That reminds me of _her_ more than anything."

Spock pressed a button on the control panel, and the one-way mirror turned into a plain window. Michael knelt down to look at Carnelian through the glass.

Carnelian looked back at her and held out her hand. She was holding Jasper's gemstone.

"Is she..."

Before Michael could finish the question, Carnelian's form destabalized completely, and her gem fell to the floor.

Michael turned to Spock.

"She could _see_ me, Spock," Michael said. "They must have had some sort of telepathic connection with you."

Spock sat down next to Michael.

"If that connection is the reason you appear before me," he said, "it would stand to reason that the connection is still active."

"So they're still alive."

"Their physical forms are simply a way to interact with the world around them. The essence of the individual lies with the gem."

Spock got up and used the control panel to deactivate the mirror completely, before walking over and picking up the two gemstones.

"If they _are_ still alive, their survival may be in jeopardy. It is imperative that we find a way to communicate."

"A mind-meld?"

"If they are in danger," Spock said, "it is the only way."


	4. Chapter 4

_Your mind to my mind._

_Your thoughts to my thoughts._

Carnelian and Jasper looked at each other, confused. This wasn't fusion, was it? No, they still were two separate people, with separate identities. But somehow they were thinking the same thoughts.

They found themselves in a blank void. It didn't feel real, they thought. It felt like some sort of... dream? But wait. They didn't know what a dream was.

"A dream," said Michael, "is an experince that takes place in your mind while you're asleep. I don't know if your species experiences them. But ours do."

She walked up to them.

"I'm Michael Burnham," she said. "Or rather, a memory of Michael that exists in her brother's mind."

"So we're _inside_ Spock's head?" Carnelian asked. She remembered losing her form after the electromagnetic pulse. "How could we be concious again so quickly?"

"And we're connected, somehow," said Jasper as she looked around, seeing if anyone else was there. "We each know what the others are thinking."

"Spock has joined his mind to yours," Michael said, "and to each other."

"So are we real?" Jasper asked. "Or are we just figments of his imagination?"

"In a way, you're both. Your conciousness exists within Spock, but you're still connected to your gems."

Carnelian started to wander several yards away. Jasper wondered if she should stop her, but she supposed that Carnelian wouldn't be hard to spot, even from miles away, when there was literally nothing else.

"Our species has its own way of joining minds together," Jasper said. "But we only use it to combine Gems who are already identical into larger versions of themselves. Carnelian and I, we're different kinds of quartzes. We'd never be able to do it."

"The mind meld is a Vulcan technique," said Michael. "I've never heard of it behaving like this, but then again, it was rarely practiced at all until about a hundred years ago."

Carnelian approached them - from the opposite direction in which she had left.

"Check it out," she said to Jasper. "It loops."

Jasper remembered the word Michael has used to describe Commander Spock. _Brother._ A male sibling? That thought must have come from Spock's mind. She didn't know what _sibling_ meant, either.

"I was raised by Spock's parents," Michael said. "They took me in when I was ten. Spock and I grew up together. You don't have parents, do you? But you came from the same place. And you grew up together, too."

"We don't really grow up," Carnelian said. "We come out of the ground fully formed, and that's exactly what we are, forever."

"Usually we come out when we're still _in_ the ground," Jasper added, "instead of waiting until we get attacked by Romulans."

She looked at Carnelian.

"Maybe we _are_ siblings," Jasper said. "Maybe that's our relationship."

"But we're not the same. I'm a Carnelian. You're, like, way taller than me."

"Michael and Spock aren't the same. And they were clearly very close."

Jasper kneeled down to Carnelian's eye level. They weren't just two random quartzes that happened to be in the same place. Whether it was the mind meld or just intuition, they could both tell that they _did_ care about each other.

Carnelian suddenly jumped forward and gave Jasper a big hug, knocking her to the ground.

Jasper laughed. "Speaking of things I'd never do!"

But she hugged her back.


	5. Chapter 5

Jasper and Carnelian had been together as long as they had existed; first as inert rocks, then as keepsakes, then, somehow, as people.

The two of them had been Starfleet crewmen for decades now. It was a strange existence; although they had been born with knowledge of the world that created them, they had were never able to find their own people. So they kept doing the one thing they knew they could do, and do well: serving as security division officers on board the _USS Kawaikini_.

At one point, the ship was tasked with transporting a rogue scientist who had blantantly violated regulations on genetic engineering. His name was Jumba Jookiba.

He was taller than Carnelian, but shorter than Jasper; his build suggested he might be rather strong (not that an organic being like him would have been a match for the two Gems), but he didn't carry himself like someone who relied on his physical strength. He seemed to pay no attention to Carnelian and Jasper as they entered the room.

Carnelian sat down next to him, but he kept looking at his shoes.

"Hey," she said.

Jasper, still standing, shot her a confused look.

"Did you just say 'hey'?"

"He's not gonna hurt us, since, well, he can't _physically_ hurt us. We might as well talk to him."

Jumba finally looked over at them. "That is not against Starfleet policy?" he asked.

"I suppose not," Jasper said.

"A smart idea," said Jumba as Jasper sat down next to her sister. "Rule of Acquisition 179: Do not mistreat your debtors, lest they later become your creditors. Although I doubt I'll ever return to my former prominence in the scientific community."

He peered at the Gems with the larger of his two pairs of eyes.

"You're not organic beings, are you?"

"I'm Carnelian, and this is my sister Jasper. We're both quartzes."

"Ah, yes, I have seen many quartzes," Jumba said. "None that have come to life, of course, but I suppose it was only a matter of time."

"To be honest," said Carnelian, "we're not really sure _what_ we are."

"We were created to be soldiers," Jasper explained. "But when we woke up for the first time, the people who made us were nowhere to be found. We think they may be long extinct by now."

"So you would be the only two left?" asked Jumba. "I am surprised you are still doing the same job you were created for. At least, your post is the closest thing to a soldier that a ship like this would have."

"Why wouldn't we be?" Carnelian asked.

Jumba leaned back. "I have learned two things recently. One, when you are trying to escape the law, make sure _their_ Federation does not have an extradition treaty with _your_ Federation."

Jasper nodded. "Yeah, that seems important."

"And second... when you create a living being, no matter what parts you make it out of, it will not always be what you create it to be."

Jumba went back to looking at the empty wall in front of him.

"Now, I am what you might call an 'evil genius.'" He shrugged as if to be humble. "My magnum opus, the creation I am most proud of, was a being of raw destructive potential and boundless energy. Do you know what he is doing now? Hmm? He is living on Earth. With a _family._ He is destroying nothing! Now, I do not wish to disrupt his life again, of course - I care about him a great deal, and I want him to be happy - but this proves my point."

He glanced at Carnelian and Jasper out of the corner of his eyes and smiled. Despite openly referring to himself as "evil", it seemed like he was actually trying to give them advice.

"If you are anything like him," Jumba said, "you may someday find something in yourself that your progenitors would never have known."


End file.
